


Leap of Faith

by Turbulent_Muse



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Amanda is along for the ride, Detailed descriptions of possible deaths, Dirk is a believer, Except with real ghosts and demons, Farah only shows up at the end but she's mentioned earlier, Gen, Major Character Undeath, Occult symbols, Pararibulitis (Dirk Gently), Psychic Abilities, To make some ghosts you gotta kill a few faves, Todd is a skeptic, accidentally performing an occult ritual, buzzfeed unsolved au, spending the night in a haunted house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 01:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16672309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turbulent_Muse/pseuds/Turbulent_Muse
Summary: Buzzfeed Unsolved AU: Dirk and Todd are paranormal investigators with a relatively popular youtube channel. When they decide to go visit a supposedly haunted house in Todd's hometown (and bring Amanda along with them) things go a bit different than usual.





	Leap of Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Also there wasn't really an opportunity to bring it up in the fic but everything Dirk knows about demons is very wrong. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to ghosts, but not demons.
> 
> AO3 messed up the format, I'd recommend just asking me to email it to you directly if you want it to be more comprehensible

The scene is Dirk Gently and Todd Brotzman sitting at a desk in a small office, both facing the camera. Behind them are cork boards with newspaper clippings connected by webs of red string. Dirk begins addressing the camera.

“Today on Dirk Gently’s Unsolved Paranormal Mysteries we’re investigating a haunted house as part of our ongoing investigation into the question: Are ghosts and demons real?”

Close up on Todd’s face as he shakes his head no. Dirk continues.

“Usually we investigate locations that are famous for being haunted, but this week, unusually, we’re investigating a place you’ve almost certainly never heard of before.”

Todd begins addressing the camera, almost embassedly.

“Yeah, so in the town where I grew up there was this house on the corner that everyone said was haunted and kids would like, dare each other to go inside on halloween and stuff and when I mentioned it to Dirk he said we had to do an episode there so here we are.”

“And did you believe these rumors about the house being haunted?”

“No, because ghosts aren’t real.”

“But like when you were a kid,”

“Even when I was a kid I knew that ghosts were bullshit.”

“Well okay then.”

“Amanda was like really into it, though. She one hundred percent believed every rumor about that house that anyone told her.”

“Well then I’m looking forward to having another open minded individual here with us on the investigation.”

Todd scoffs and rolls his eyes. He then turns back to the camera.

“Oh yeah right, um so we called my sister Amanda to ask about what rumors about the house she remembered and she insisted on coming on the investigation with us.”

“Let’s go over the basic history of the house.”

The scene now shows images of the rundown abandoned house from throughout the years as well as simple drawings, animations, and staged pictures showing the events that Dirk narrates in voice-over.

_This used to be just a regular house, home to a regular family, until one day they left suddenly and with no explanation. They never sold the house but they also never returned, leaving the once beautiful home to rot into the empty shell it is today. There is no official explanation as to why they left, but local legend suggests that the family’s two children had found a book on the occult and used it to summon a demon in the basement. The family, unable to destroy or banish the creature, fled the house to escape it._

Suddenly the scene changes to a blank black background with Todd and Dirk’s dialogue transcribed on it.

**This is my hometown and I’m pretty sure that the local library doesn’t have books on how to summon demons.**

**Well the book could have been a family heirloom, or something they just found somewhere.**

**That doesn’t seem like something you just find laying around.**

**Yeah, honestly you’re right now that I think about it. What, was a witch just taking a leisurely stroll through the suburbs and dropped her demon summoning book but was just like “Oh well I hope this doesn’t lead to anything bad happening.”**

**So you admit that this demon summoning thing sounds like bullshit.**

**No, I’m just saying that the book was probably an old family heirloom they found in the attic or something.**

**(sigh)**

The images and narration resume.

_“As our regular viewers know, a demon is not the spirit of a deceased person, like a ghost, but rather a completely inhuman evil creature here to steal the life force of the living and drag as many human souls to hell as it can. Our regular viewers also know that I am absolutely terrified of demons and will only investigate one case of demonic activity per season.”_

**And you’re wasting it in the season premiere on some random house nobody’s ever heard of.**

**But this is exciting! This is where you grew up! It’s personal!**

**Dirk, I have been deliberately trying to keep my personal life as far away from this show as possible.**

**Well you’re doing a terrible job. We’re going to your hometown and your sister’s coming with us.**

**(sigh)**

_“In the decades since the house was abandoned people have reported seeing a figure in the windows. This figure is almost universally described as a woman with wild reddish brown hair covered in blood and sometimes holding a knife. There is only one verifiable instance of someone seeing this figure while inside of the house but it is a doozy. According to police reports, seven years after the house was abandoned two bank robbers tried to hide the cash they stole in the house’s basement. One of the robbers died that night in one of the upstairs bedrooms. The other surrendered himself to the police and told them everything. He claimed that a woman with wild hair and a kitchen knife had chased them throughout the house. They tried shooting her but she was impervious to their bullets and seemed to be able to open any locked door and bypass any barricade. However, she was unwilling or unable to follow them outside the house, which is how he was able to escape, jumping out of a window and breaking both of his legs. Some have speculated that this means that the demon is bound to the house and cannot leave it. Interestingly, the body inside the house was found in its underwear and the clothes the man was wearing before he died were never found._

**The guy obviously just killed his partner and used the demon story to try get out of it.**

**But then why jump out a window and surrender to the police? And by all accounts this man was legitimately afraid of something. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital and later killed himself.**

**So he was crazy and believed he saw a demon but he didn’t actually see a demon.**

**How do you know?**

  
**Because demons aren’t real.**

**Well we’ll just have to see what Amanda has to say about it.**

The scene shifts to Todd, Dirk, and Amanda sitting on the porch of the haunted house.

“Yeah no, demons are totally bullshit.”

“Oh. But you do still believe that this house is haunted, right?”

“Oh yeah, totally. One time when I was like fourteen me and a bunch of other kids spent the night in there on a dare. In the middle of the night we all woke up when a lamp got thrown against the wall by nothing. We were so scared we all just ran.”

“Seriously, Amanda? I’ve told you a thousand times that either one of the other kids threw that lamp or it just fell.”

“No way dude, it was totally a ghost!”

“Sorry, but I just think that it’s more likely that in the dark when you were tired and scared you didn’t notice that someone had gotten up to throw the lamp than it is that ghosts are real.”

“Well then I guess I’ll just have to find something in there that proves you wrong.”

“Amanda, can I just say how fantastic it is to have you here with us.”

“I’m sure you’ll change your mind about that when all that happens is that now there’s two people here to laugh at you when you scream instead of just me.” Todd interjects.

“I’ll have you know that I plan to handle this investigation with the utmost professionalism.”

Todd looks directly at the camera like he’s on The Office.

The scene cuts to Dirk attempting to psych himself into opening the door. He makes several attempts, chickening out before turning the doorknob each time. A muffled but audible conversation is happening in the background between Todd and Amanda while this is going on.

“Are you sure you want to do this? I can still take you home.”

“Todd, I’ll be fine. I brought my pills and it’s not like I'd be any safer at home than I will be here. Especially since you don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Yeah ghosts and demons are definitely not why I’m worried.”

“I can survive camping out on some dusty floorboards for one night, even with Dirk hilariously screaming the whole time.”

“Okay, okay. It’s just that I worry about you.”

“I know.”

“And I love you.”

“I know that too.”

Dirk finally manages to turn the doorknob.

“Alright, okay, we’re doing this, let’s go.”

Dirk walks into the house.

“Ah! Oh, just a shadow.”

Todd follows. And calls out into the house as he does.

“Hey ghouls, the boys are here!”

Amanda laughs as she too enters the house.

The scene changes to Dirk, Todd, and Amanda standing in the basement of the house. The floor, walls, and ceiling are covered in both occult symbols and graffiti. There is a large central pentagram on the floor, Todd is standing in the center of it. Dirk is standing in a corner near the door. Amanda is casually leaning against a wall. Todd begins speaking in a deliberately irreverent manner.

“Hey demon! I’m right here! It sure would be a great time to stab me!”

“Oh my god you have a death wish.” Dirk whispers loudly and harshly.

Amanda giggles.

“Any demon that would pass up such a perfect opportunity to kill me must be pretty weak and lame!”

Dirk puts his head in his hands, defeated but still scared.

“Why do you always have to do this in the demon places?”

“What about Dirk? Do you want to kill him? Because we’re a package deal, if you want to kill me you have to kill him too.”

“Please stop including me in this thing you insist on doing! It’s not true! Don't Listen to him! Not a package deal at all! Feel perfectly free to kill him and leave me alone!”

“Ha! You talked to the demon!”

“ _Fuck_.”

Amanda starts laughing out loud. Todd continues to address the room.

“Alright demon, my friend Dirk Gently-”

“Don’t tell the demon my full name!”

“-Thinks that you’re trapped in this house, that you can’t leave, like a loser.”

“I never said that! I never called you a loser-Shit! Stop talking to it, stop talking to it!”

“Well lucky for you we’re both going to be sleeping here so you have all night to murder us. You don’t have to start stabbing now, build suspense if you want. Make a noise! Make the lights flicker! If you want to kill me tonight, give us a sign!”

Silence.

“If you want to kill Dirk-“

Thud.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!”

Dirk begins running around while screaming. Todd laughs hysterically and Amanda joins in too.

“Oh my god Todd _what was that_ oh my god oh my god oh my god!”

“Dirk, calm down.”

“Todd it _wants to kill_ me!”

A voice is heard from behind the camera.

“Sorry guys, I dropped my flashlight”

“See, it was just Ken’s flashlight. Chill.”’

“It was? Okay…Okay.”

Dirk continues hyperventilating for a few moments but eventually regains his composure.

“Okay, now we’ll each spend two minutes alone down here with our flashlights off.” Todd announces.

“What.”

“Do you want to find proof or not?”

Close up on Dirk’s conflicted face. The scene changes to Dirk alone in the basement, seen in green tinted night-vision.

“Um, any demons in here please don't kill me-Shit! I’m talking to it again. Todd? How much longer?”

“About a minute Dirk, you’re almost halfway there.”

“Okay, right, good, I can do this.”

There’s a moment of silence. The scene then cuts to Todd and Amanda waiting at the top of the stairs. Faint screams from Dirk can be heard getting louder along with footsteps as Dirk runs out of the basement, terrified. Todd tries to hold back laughter.

“Okay what was it this time?”

“No, I don’t want to tell you. You won’t believe me and you’ll say it’s stupid.”

“Come on Dirk, I’m sure the audience will want to know what happened, don’t you want to convince them that demons are real?”

“I...felt cold all of the sudden.”

“Dirk. It was a basement. It’s cold down there.”

“Yeah but this was like a sudden chill, and that is a known sign of spiritual activity!”

“Well I’m going down there now, so hopefully I’ll get footage of the demon giving me goosebumps.”

Todd laughs as he walks down the stairs, Dirk looks annoyed. The scene now shows Todd alone in the dark basement. He addresses the room with a bored inflection.

“Okay demon, I’m gonna be down here for two minutes. Do try to kill me.”

Nothing happens.

“Or you could just make a noise or something.”

Nothing happens.

“Wow, what a wimpy demon, can’t even make a noise or kill me! You’re a coward!”

Nothing.

“Yeah, I thought so. Guess I’ll just be quiet now and see if our audio recorder picks up any weird noises that Dirk will insist are voices later.”

The scene changes to Dirk and Amanda at the top of the stairs. Amanda is on her phone and leaning casually against the wall. Dirk looks nervous. Todd ascends the stairs.

“Nope, nothing. No activity demonic or otherwise.”

Dirk looks relieved.

“Oh thank god.”

Todd smirks and calls back down into the basement.

“Hey demon if you change your mind and want to kill Dirk later you can find him in Springborough, Seattle at-”

“STOP TELLING DEMONS WHERE I LIVE!”

The scene switches back to pictures and voiceover.

_This house’s reputation for being haunted is surprisingly mostly unrelated to the supposed demonic activity. Unfortunately, it is also mostly comprised of rumors meaning that the specific details that would allow any of this to be fact-checked against official records are almost entirely absent. That being said, after having Todd and Amanda recount what they had heard while growing up in this neighborhood, looking up the house on the internet, and talking to some local teens-_

**You talked to teens?**

**Farah yelled at them over skype until they were nice to me.**

_Our assistant researcher and I were able to come up with a list of the three most popular and persistent stories about this house. Each of these stories involves four people dying in this house approximately 20-30 years ago but who these people were, why they were here, and how they died varies. This one bit of consistency is probably due to the fact that I was able to find some official documents mentioning four bodies being found in the house, but we found no details and nothing suggesting any kind of investigation into their deaths._

**That seems shady.**

**(laughing)**  
**No no I mean that stuff probably exists it’s just not available to the public or easy to find after so long.**

 **Oh!**  
**(laughing)**

_The ghostly activity rumored to have been witnessed in this house includes: lights turning on and off (even though the house lacks electricity), noises like shattering glass, cold spots, debris moving on its own, things in the house getting broken, loud voices yelling, and people feeling like they’ve been hit by a blunt object. Some people have even reported seeing figures dressed in early ‘90s era fashions, and sometimes carrying a baseball bat or similar improvised weapon._

**Y'know, it’s nice to hear about a ghost from the ‘90s instead of, like, the 1890s or something.**

**Yeah, you normally don’t hear about a place being haunted unless it’s like at least a hundred years old.**

**It is weird that ninety percent of ghosts are from people who died before like 1929.**

**You guys should look into that on your next season of Unsolved Conspiracy Theories.**

**Oh god,**  
***impersonating Dirk***  
**Todd I solved it, the Great Depression made it too expensive for people to become ghosts, everything is connected!**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**  
**Is that your british accent?**

**Shut up.**

_The first story is that four men who had escaped from a nearby prison hid out in this house while on the run. But the police caught up to them and surrounded the place. Seeing no way to escape, the men decided that they would rather die than go back to prison, and slit their own throats._

**With what?**

**What?**

**If they had just gotten out prison what did they slit their throats with?**

**They could have had a shank or something, I don’t know. Or found something in the house.**

**Maybe they borrowed the demon’s knife.**

**Yeah! Maybe they borrowed—oh, you’re joking.**

**Anyway this story kind of falls apart when you take into account that there’s never been a prison anywhere near here.**

**Yeah, in some versions of the story it was an asylum but there’s none of those here either.**

**Well then, moving on.**

_Another rumor says that a serial killer used this house as his lair, killing people in gruesome ways here where no one could hear them scream and leaving their bodies in the basement where no one would ever find them (and possibly as part of satanic rituals). After three such killings though, the ghosts of his victims rose up and murdered him, trapping his soul here forever._

**Okay wait, so like supposedly the ghosts of the three victims are trapped here for eternity with the guy who murdered them?**

**Oh, I hadn't thought of that. That does seem rather unfortunate.**

**Do you think that like eventually just since they’re stuck together they like move past that and become friends?**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**  
**Like some kind of wacky ghost sitcom.**

**I bet—I bet it’s that kind thing where it still gets brought up in every argument though like-**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**

**Like “Hey why didn’t you take out the um...ghost trash or whatever?” “Uh, I don’t know, why did you murder me?” “Okay that’s fair.”**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**  
**Ghost trash? Really, Todd?**

**Shut up.**

_This theory is unlikely because the presence of a serial killer in the area would most likely generate some kind of media coverage._

“Also-”

As Todd interrupts the narration the scene shifts to Amanda, Todd, and Dirk sitting on a beaten up couch in the living room of the haunted house.

“You could totally hear it if someone was getting murdered in that basement.”

Dirk looks pensive.

“I don’t know if you could, I mean it’s got thick concrete walls. Let’s test it!”

“Perfect, we’ll go down there and I’ll murder you and see if Amanda can hear us from outside.”

“I’m serious, Todd, go down there and scream and we’ll stand outside and listen.”

“If anyone should be the one screaming it’s you! You’d be screaming down there whether you were supposed to be or not!”

“Let’s flip a coin.”

“Okay, deal. Amanda do you have a quarter?”

“Yeah. Alright, call it.”

“Heads.”

“Tails.”

“Ha!”

“Fuck, why do you always win at these things?”

“I don’t know, I guess the universe just likes me.”

Dirk smiles and makes an exaggerated shrugging motion as Todd gets up to go down to the basement.

The scene shows Todd in the basement alone with his flashlight. He begins yelling unenthusiastically. The scene changes to show Dirk and Amanda standing outside the house making small talk. Todd’s yelling can be heard faintly. Amanda lights a joint.

Cut back to Todd.

“Guys! Can you hear me?! Hello!”

He starts yelling louder.

Cut back to Amanda and Dirk. Todd’s yelling can be heard slightly louder.

“How long should we leave him down there?”

“Eh let’s give it a bit longer. Unless you guys need to get footage of something more interesting instead?”

“No, I’m sure our viewers will find this very entertaining.”

Cut back to Todd.

“Oh man, I really hope no one calls the police.”

He continues screaming.

Cut back outside. Amanda puts out the remainder of her joint on the side of the house.

“Okay, let’s go get him before someone calls the police.”

The scene changes to Amanda, Todd, and Dirk back on the couch.

“So you guys couldn’t hear me at all?”

Amanda shrugs. Dirk is obviously trying to stifle laughter as he responds.

“Nope, sorry Todd, guess it really is the perfect murder basement.”

Todd looks at Dirk suspiciously. Dirk fails to contain his giggling and Amanda starts laughing.

“Oh, fuck you guys!”

_The third and, in my opinion, most likely theory is that during a particularly harsh winter a small street gang hid out in this house while on the run from the cops. The supposed reasons these people were on the run range from theft to vandalism to breaking and entering to property damage to the fact that one of the gang’s four members was said to be a child or teenager who had either run away from home or been kidnapped._

**Sounds like kind of a lame street gang actually.**

**(laughing)**

**What?**

**Well I mean there were only four of them and the worst thing they could have been on the run for was theft and vandalism, not really the most terrifying gang out there.**

**Didn’t you just say that they might have kidnapped a boy?**

**Exactly, “might have” like no one could even fully believe that they’d do that.**

**(laughing)**

**Besides, it sounds like if they did take him the worst they’d do is teach him how to pick locks and graffiti things.**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**

**I’m just saying, most gangs kill people.**

_The story goes that the roads became too icy to drive on so the gang abandoned their car and decided to wait out the storm in this house, where they hoped the pursuing police wouldn’t think to look for them. Once inside, they immediately began to graffiti the walls and smash the furniture._

**Why?**

**Well I mean it’s not like there’s a lot to do in a place like this.**

**Yeah Todd if you’re in an old empty house what else are you going to do except smash shit?**

**Alright, that’s fair.**

**Not to argue against my own point but we’re here and we’re not smashing stuff.**

**Yeah we’re just looking for ghosts.**

**You say that like you think breaking things would be a better use of our time.**

**I definitely think it would be. Because anything would be.**

_While the men were inside the house the storm outside got worse and worse and the temperature dropped until it got cold enough that the house no longer provided adequate shelter and the four men froze to death in the downstairs bedroom._

**Now this one seems legit to me.**

**It’s definitely the most plausible theory of the three.**

**Yeah those others were bullshit.**

**Oh…You’re probably right.**

**But this definitely could have happened.**

**Oh come on, sis, it’s just a made up story that kids use to scare each other.**

**But remember when we were kids and there was that huge snowstorm and we all had to stay inside for days? That could have been when it happened!**

**Or it could have been what inspired the story! Look, even if the story is true that doesn’t mean that the dudes that died in here are ghosts now.**

**But what about the graffiti?**

**What?**

**All the red graffiti, the ‘Rowdy 3’ stuff. It’s all in the same color and handwriting and it’s been here for like twenty years but no one’s ever covered it up, it still looks brand new.**

**Ooh, excellent point, Amanda!**

**No, it’s not! Maybe people just think it looks cool, or the guy that did it comes back every once in a while to freshen it up, it could be a hundred things before it’s ghosts!**

**Oh come on, Todd, can’t you just believe in something for once in your life!**

**Actually, if there were four of them why call themselves ‘The Rowdy 3’?**

**Maybe the three meant something? Like as a part of their gang’s mission statement or whatever?**

**Maybe after the fourth one showed up they were just too lazy to change it.**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**

**(doing a gruff gangster voice)**  
**“Listen kid, I know we kidnapped you to make you join our gang or whatever, but-”**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**  
**(also doing a voice)**  
**“Branding is very important for an up and coming street gang and we don’t want to risk losing the reputation we already have-**

**(wheeze)**

**-as petty thieves and vandals.”**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**

**(laughing)**

The scene cuts back to show the three on the couch, laughing hysterically. After a while the laughter dies down and Dirk composes himself.

“Okay, let’s find some ghosts!”

The scene shifts to Dirk talking to the camera as the light from outside dims while Todd sets things up in the background. Amanda is still on the couch.

“Alright, we’re going to start here in the living room, we’re setting up motion sensors and audio recorders and we’re going to try talking directly to the spirits in a moment.”

Todd places a flashlight down on a folding chair in the middle of the living room. He starts talking to the empty air.

“Okay, ghosts, all you have to do to turn on this flashlight is barely touch it or make the air around it a little bit warmer or whatever, because literally almost anything could turn the flashlight on or off. so if you’re here, show us a sign.”

“We are now addressing only the ghosts in this house and not the demon that lives in the basement—Ah!”

Dirk jumps, startled and turns around quick, waving his own flashlight around wildly.

“What? What is it?”

“I swear I heard a voice right by my ear, I think it was like, growling.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just step on a creaky floorboard or something?”

“Yes, Todd, I’m sure! Oh, I think it was too quiet for our audio recorders to pick it up. Spirit! Please make that noise again but louder!...And maybe not so close to me...and maybe actually make it a less creepy noise?”

Silence. Todd rolls his eyes. Dirk is determined not to lose face, he addresses the room again.

“Alright spirit! How about instead you turn on the flashlight. If you are one of the four people who died in this house-”

Amanda chimes in from the couch.

“Wait, what about the demon murder guy, couldn’t he hypothetically be the ghost?”

“No, if he got killed by a demon then his soul was dragged to hell.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah, there’s a reason I don’t like messing with demons. Anyway, spirit, if you are one or all of the four people here who either murdered each other or commited suicide or froze to death—Ah! Todd! Oh my god!”

The flashlights slowly turns on and off three times.

“It’s just a coincidence, you didn’t even finish asking it to do anything.”

Dirk is starting to sound excited but also a bit nervous.

“Um, I think the rest of that sentence was pretty intuitable.”

“Whatever. Hey if that was a ghost do it again.”

Nothing.

“If anyone is here and wants us to leave, turn on the flashlight”

Nothing.

“If you want to hurt us turn on the flashlight.”

“Why do you always have to ask things like tha—Ah! Oh god! It turned on!”

Dirk backs up against a wall and looks scared. Todd starts laughing. In an amusing and appropriate coincidence there is bright red graffiti just above Dirk’s head reading ‘OH NO’.

“Hey ghosts, do you want to hurt us tonight while we’re sleeping here? If so turn off the flashlight.”

The flashlight slowly turns off. Dirk wimpers a bit.

“Is it just me you want to hurt...or do you want to hurt Dirk—Oh! Look!”

The flashlight turns on. Todd laughs harder. Dirk screams.

“No! Why!”

Amanda starts laughing over on the couch.

“Oh my god Dirk they know you called them lame!”

Todd is doubled over laughing at this, Dirk looks seriously distraught and he slowly sinks down to the floor.

“I take it back! I take it back! You’re very scary! I am currently scared shitless! So now there’s nothing left to prove and you don’t have to hurt us!”

Todd laughs as he tries to calm Dirk down.

“Seriously, Dirk, you gotta chill, the flashlight was just turning on and off on its own.”

“In response to the things you said?”

Todd walks over to retrieve the flashlight.

“It was just a coincidence. Ow! Fuck!”

Todd drops the flashlight.

“What is it, what happened?”

“It shocked me! Shit! It did it again!”

Todd drops the flashlight a second time and this time it turns off. He cautiously reaches down and attempts to pick it up again. This time he succeeds.

“Todd! This is a thing! This is a ghost thing!”

Dirk runs over to Todd, sounding both excited and scared.

“It said it wanted to hurt us and now it’s shocking you with the flashlight!”

“Or maybe my flashlight is just broken, I mean these things are practically designed to do random shit”

“But-”

“Hey guys…”

Amanda gets up from the couch.

“Do you guys hear, like, laughing?”

“Oh, don’t encourage this bullshit.” Todd scolds.

“No, seriously. Like are there maybe people outside or something?”

Todd goes to the window.

“I don’t see anyone out there.”

“I’m sorry Amanda, I don’t hear anything.”

“Hey, sis, do you want me to take you home?”

“No, no. It’s fine. I’m fine. I probably just heard the wind and like got paranoid or something.”

“You were smoking while we were outside.”

“Yeah, you’re right, that’s probably it, I just need to wait it out and I’ll be fine.”

Amanda goes back to the couch and lies down. Todd walks over to her.

“Hey, you let me know if you’re not okay and I’ll take you home, alright?”

“Yeah, I will. Thanks, Todd.”

“Alright, the bedrooms are where people have both definitely and supposedly died, so let’s check them out next!” Dirk Interjects.

“Alright, but only the downstairs one, I don’t trust that staircase and I don’t want to die in a weird abandoned old house. You’d definitely be too scared to go into the room the guy got killed by ‘a demon’ in anyway.”

“If you do die here will you haunt me forever out of revenge?”

“No. Because ghosts aren’t real.”

Amanda joins in from the couch.

“Think about it though, if you haunted him all you’d have to do was move something or make a noise and you could watch him scream like a baby whenever you want!”

“That does sound fun.”

“Hey!”

The scene changes to show Dirk and Todd outside of the downstairs bedroom. The cameraman is not with them. Dirk addresses his handheld camera.

“Alright, we’re each going to spend three minutes alone in there in the dark, Todd is going to go first.”

“Because Dirk is scared.”

“Yes. While in there we will try several different methods of gathering evidence. We have motion sensors and audio recorders set up, and I will be using the spirit box.”

“And I will not. Because it’s stupid.”

“It is not!”

Dirk and Todd both gradually start sounding more frustrated.

“Dirk, if you’re listening to radio stations you’re going to hear words and voices! It’s not ghosts!”

“Oh so a bunch of different radio stations are coincidentally working together to create a bunch words strung together with the same voice that are intelligently answering my questions?”

“If you show me something that convincing then I will admit that it’s probably not a coincidence and something else is going on”

“I have shown you things! Lots of things!”

“What you’ve shown me is a bunch of random noises that you insist sound like words.”

Well I guess I’ll just have to find some evidence in there that even you can’t dismiss!”

“Alright then you do that!”

“I will!”

“Do you still want me to go in first?!”

“Yes!”

The scene changes to Todd alone in the bedroom illuminated by green tinted night vision. Todd has a handheld camera, a chest-mounted camera pointed at his face, and his flashlight. The room is filled with debris of broken furniture. The door is still on its hinges but only just. There are holes in the wall and most of the glass in the window has been broken out. All of the blankets and pillows are piled up in one corner on the room. Todd slowly turns around, checking out different areas of the room with his flashlight.

“Oh Dirk is going to hate this, it’s so creepy. I can’t wait to hear him screaming.”

Todd turns off his flashlight and addresses the dark room.

“Any ghosts in here who uh, want to cause some trouble? Break more things? Throw something at my head? Ow! Again?!”

Todd drops his flashlight. Before he can retrieve it his camera goes flying out of his hand and hits the ground hard. Todd grabs his hand and winces.

“Fuck! Oh no, please don’t be broken.”

As Todd tries to retrieve his belongings he is suddenly tripped and ends up landing flat on his face on the floor. He yells as he falls and groans as he hits the ground.

“Todd! Todd are you okay?!”

“Yeah, I just fell down.”

Dirk enters the room and helps Todd get to his feet.

“The flashlight shocked me again and then I must have hit my hand on some broken furniture and tripped on...more broken furniture or something.”

Dirk gasps.

“Todd, do you think-”

“No.”

“Oh, really, you don’t think? Well I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Shut up.”

“Todd, one of the rumored signs of ghostly activity in here was the feeling of getting hit with a blunt object!”

“Yeah well there’s a lot of blunt objects in here to bump into.”

“Todd, eventually you’ll have to admit that something we’ve come across in our investigations is evidence of the supernatural!”

“I don’t, because it isn’t. You try to stay in here in the dark without bumping into something. Like, seriously, try to. Because it’s your turn.”

“Oh...great.”

The scene changes to Dirk alone in the bedroom in the dark, seen in night-vision.

“Oh god this room is so creepy. Okay. If there’s someone in here with me, perhaps four someones, perhaps some rowdy boys who like to graffiti things, give me some sort of sign. Some sort of non-violent, non-scary sign?”

Dirk waits for a moment. The faint noise of a voice growling is heard.

“Oh god! There it is again! S-Spirit! Can you please do something less threatening?”

The growling continues, it starts to sound like multiple voices.

“Oh dear…”

Cut back to Todd standing outside the bedroom, absentmindedly talking to his camera.

“Was Amanda right when she said I never believe in things? No, no I believe in things...Some things. Not ghosts...But if there was actual proof of ghosts, like real scientific evidence, I’d start believing in them...I guess it’s not really believing if you need proof first. But I mean it’s reasonable that I should want some evidence for something before I believe in it. And, alright, I guess I haven't actually been seriously looking for any real evidence. I mostly just do this to make fun of Dirk and keep him from going completely crazy. But if I ever see any reasonably plausible evidence...Okay so the stuff that happened in there was kinda weird and maybe something weird is going on but that doesn’t mean it’s a ghost something…Y’know I might not be able to say for sure what is plausible evidence but I can tell you what what definitely isn’t. That goddamn—”

 

Cut back to Dirk.

“A-Alright this is called a spirit box, and it’s going to let you use the radio to communicate with me through words instead of just scary noises.”

Dirk turns on the spirit box. Staticky white noise created by the clips of voices is heard.

“Do you want to say anything? Tell me who you are?”

A slightly distorted voice is heard from the spirit box.

“Bad news delivery!”

“Oh, um-”

Dirk is interrupted by more voices

“Shut your hole!”

”Let’s rage!”

Dirk’s voice is a terrified squeak.

“Um, okay. That’s-”

Dirk is interrupted by a piece of debris flying across the room, nearly hitting him. Then the sound of many voices laughing, punctuated by hollering yells, seems to originate from the room itself. More pieces of debris are thrown and Dirk runs out of the room screaming, crashing through the door rather than stopping to open it. It is ripped the rest of the way off of it’s hinges and also significantly dented. Dirk narrowly avoids crashing into Todd as well.

“Whoa, what the fuck?!”

“Todd!”

Dirk clutches Todd’s jacket, he is gasping for breath out of fear and adrenaline.

“There are ghosts in there!”

“You already thought that though, right? I mean, that’s why we’re here?”

“No, Todd listen, this is serious. I have proof. Proof of a supernatural and hostile presence.”

Todd sounds unconvinced.

“Okay, let's see it.”

Dirk rushes into the living room and gets Amanda’s attention. He then shows Todd and Amanda the footage he was able to get from the bedroom. Amanda is wide-eyed with shock.

“Holy shit dude.”

“Nope, that’s not proof.”

Dirk sounds shocked and offended.

“What?!”

“I don’t see any real evidence that anything was actually being thrown at you and you didn’t just knock something over and then get scared.”

“Well I’m sorry I was too busy running for my life to keep the camera steady, Todd! What about the words from the spirit box, they were answering me!”

Todd is starting to sound frustrated in response to Dirk’s own rising anger.

“You hear words on that thing because it’s scanning through radio stations!”

“Oh so a bunch of different radio stations all just coincidentally worked together to make those phrases when I happened to be asking questions? How many coincidences will it take until you’ll admit that a paranormal explanation is more likely!”

“It’ll take more than you hearing some random shit on the spirit box! It’s not responding to your questions, Dirk, those aren’t even real phrases!”

“They are! And what about the laughing! That’s not from the spirit box! Oh, that reminds me! Amanda, is this what you heard before?”

Dirk plays back the part of the audio that has the laughing on it a couple times. Dirk’s screams can be heard along with the other voices. Amanda sounds slightly awestruck.

“Yeah, that’s…that’s what I heard.”

“That could be the wind.”

Her wonder turns to anger.

“Seriously, Todd, the wind?”

“Or creaky floorboards, or something! There’s a billion other things it could be before it’s ghosts. And you said, before, you said what you heard might have been the wind.”

Amanda's frustrated words are tinged with bitter sadness.

“Well I’m not really the best person to be insisting that something only I’m experiencing is real. Y’know? Not exactly a reliable witness.”

She goes to sit back down on the couch.

“Amanda—”

“Forget it.”

Todd no longer sounds frustrated, he is shaken.

“I’m sorry. But that doesn’t mean that there’s ghosts in there.”

Dirk rejoins the conversation, excited.

“What about the motion detectors! I bet they went off when stuff started moving!”

“Yeah, because you were running away.”

Dirk purposely ignores this.

“And I bet the microphones in there got much better quality audio where you can definitely tell that it is voices!”

Dirk starts to move back towards the bedroom.

“Y’know, the fact that you’re willing to go back in there isn’t really selling me on the whole ‘dangerous ghosts’ thing.”

Dirk freezes.

“Oh god, you’re right. We’re in a house infested with malevolent spirits that is also known for demonic activity.”

“So, are you saying you want to leave.”

Dirk gathers his resolve and puts on a determined face.

“No. We’ll stay the night. The longer we’re here the more frequent and the more pronounced the activity is going to get, and...and I’m willing to risk my safety and yours to prove to you that there are ghosts here.”

“Wow.” Todd is genuinely impressed at Dirk’s bravery.

“Amanda should probably go home though.”

“No way, this is the only cool and exciting thing I’ve done in years. I’m staying. Plus, I don’t want to risk missing out on Todd having to admit that he’s wrong.”

“Alright then. Now let’s check the equipment from the bedroom…”

Dirk doesn’t move towards the bedroom. Todd looks at him expectantly. Dirk looks nervous.

“...Ken! Can you get the equipment from the-”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Excellent, thanks. You agree with me that this is sufficient evidence of ghosts, right Ken?”

“I’m just the cameraman, dude. I don’t have an opinion either way.”

“Oh.”

Todd begins to clear off a space on the floor and set up sleeping bags. Amanda walks over to where Dirk is standing.

“Hey, so why do you think the ghosts are going to like, escalate their stunts the longer we’re here?”

“Oh! Well, there’s this idea in ghost lore that ghosts use a kind of life energy to manifest in the world of the living through making noises, moving things, messing with electronics, and becoming visible and stuff. Lots of things can supposedly give a place an extra boost of energy: a full moon, ley lines, proximity to the witching hour, occult symbols and rituals, a history of violence, the presence of someone with psychic abilities, that sort of thing. But generally speaking, the more people who are in a place and the longer they’re there the more energy that place has and the more ghosts can do.”

“Okay. That seems reasonable. Not really the stuff about ley lines and psychic powers and stuff but I’ll buy that ghosts need an audience.”

Todd chimes in.

“That energy stuff is just a bullshit excuse people use to explain why none of their ‘evidence’ about ghosts is reliable or repeatable.”

The air-quotes are audible.

“Whatever dude.”

Amanda goes back to the couch, she lays down on it and puts her headphones in.

The scene changes to later. Amanda is still on the couch looking at her phone, but now she has a blanket. Two sleeping bags are visible on a patch of the floor that has been cleared of dust and debris. Off to the side is a folding table and folding chair with a laptop on it. Dirk and Todd stand in front of the camera. Dirk addresses the camera.

“All right, we’ve set up cameras, microphones, and motion sensors in every downstairs room, even the basement. If and when something paranormal happens tonight, we will catch it.”

“Which means now it’s time to turn off our lights and go to sleep. And Dirk, if you keep me awake all night again because you’re scared of the ghosts or the demon or just because you can’t shut up then I will take that broken piece of coffee table with the nail in it and I will use it to bash your head in.”

“That’s...alarmingly and disturbingly specific.”

“Yes it is.”

Todd gives Dirk a threatening look and Dirk flashes a nervous look at the camera.

The scene cuts to later. 12:30am is visible.

The room is dark, illuminated by night-vision. Amanda is on her phone. Dirk is fully awake and has his eyes wide open, repeatedly looking around the room. Ken is at the table working on his laptop. Todd is trying to sleep. A floorboard creaks. Dirk inhales sharply and whispers to Todd.

“Todd! Todd! Did you hear that!”

“Ugh.”

The scene cuts again. 2:00am

Everyone is now asleep except for Ken, although Dirk occasionally wakes up and then wakes Todd up. Ken suddenly stops working and searches his pockets. He curses quietly and carefully gets up, trying not to wake anyone. We see Ken making his way down into the pitch black of the basement. The basement is not seen in night-vision, just darkness. We hear Ken trip and fall on the bottom stair, groaning as he hits the ground heavily. We hear him fumbling around on the ground until he finds his flashlight and clicks it on. He points the light at his palms, they are badly scraped. He winces. He starts to leave. One of the occult symbols on the floor is illuminated by the fading light of the flashlight. It has blood on it.

2:59am

Everyone is asleep now. Ken has fallen asleep at his table, even Dirk looks soundly unconscious.

3:00am From this point onward we are no longer seeing these events through the lens of a camera.

There is a sound like every window in the house exploding inward.

Everyone bolts upright, Dirk and Todd scream as they awake. Todd looks confused.

“What was that!”

“Whoa, what’s going on?” Ken asks as he picks up his camera.

“Oh my god you guys, like, holy shit.”

“Oh my god, oh my god, it’s three AM!” Dirk yells.

Todd looks at Dirk like he’s just said the least germaine thing in the world.

“So what if it’s three AM?! It sounds like something just exploded!”

“Don’t you see Todd! It’s the witching hour! Ghosts are more powerful right now!”

“No. No way that was a ghost.”

Amanda is looking out the windows

“There’s nothing outside. And I’m pretty sure all of the glass that’s broken out of the windows was already like that when we got here.”

Todd is starting to sound desperate.

“Okay, so maybe something small broke, and because we were asleep we dreamed that it was bigger and louder.”

“All of us dreamed the same dream? That’s your logical explanation?” Dirk sounds just a bit smug

“Shut up, Dirk! Don’t pretend that that’s not more likely than ghosts!”

“Guys...I-I think I hear the laughing again.” Amanda interrupts.

For a tense moment the three of them all just look at each other.Then Dirk sighs.

“I didn’t want to suggest this unless I had to, especially because there’s a demon in the house, but there is one more thing we can try to get some real proof.”

“Holy shit Dirk,” Todd is shocked. “You don’t mean-”

“Yes.”

“But you hate that thing! You’ve only ever let us use it once and then afterwards you made us get exorcisms!”

“That’s because it’s dangerous. It invites and attracts malevolent entities and opens a door for god knows what to come through. But I’m not leaving this house until I’ve done everything I can to convince you that something supernatural is going on.”

Dirk goes out to the car and comes back carrying two items. One is a ouija board which he places on the ground with its planchet. The other is a big bag of salt which he uses to make a circle around the board large enough for three people to fit in.

“There. That should keep any demons out.”

Amanda looks thoughtful.

“If demons are coming here through the board then won’t they be trapped in the circle with us?”

“Then we can jump out of the circle.”

Amanda sounds curious rather than scared.

“But what if demons come through the board and the demon that’s already here-”

Dirk’s voice is pitched high enough to be barely intelligible.

“Can we just stop talking and do this before I change my mind?”

Todd has calmed down and now sounds more annoyed than defensive.

“Yeah, if we get this over with quick enough maybe we can go back to sleep.”

Dirk ignores this.

“Alright. Let’s start.”

Al three of them rest their hands on the planchet.

“Okay now first we spell out our names.”

They do so. Dirk takes a deep breath.

“Okay, is there any presence here that wishes to speak to us?”

Amanda once again hears a voice that the others don’t, but this time instead of just laughing she hears words.

“This is gonna be fun.”

Before Amanda can say anything the planchet begins to slowly move. It moves to ‘No’.

Amanda starts laughing hysterically, she hears the voices laughing too. Todd looks amused.

“Amanda, did you move the thing?”

“No man, I swear. I think we might just be dealing with a smartass bunch of ghosts.”

The voices laugh again at that. Amanda thinks she should probably be scared, and it is kinda creepy and seriously worrying, but it’s hard to be afraid of something that just made a joke. Amanda decides not to say anything, at least not until they’re done with the ouija board.

“Well, if there is a ghost here they don’t want to talk to us so let's just go back to bed.” Todd reasons tiredly.

“No. Something is here, something moved the planchet, we’re trying again. Please, spirit, say something! Anything!” Dirk respond firmly.

“Ooh, lemme try it.”

The planchet starts moving again. Slowly sliding from letter to letter. It spells out ‘S P O O K Y B U L L S H I T’

“Okay seriously, which one of you guys is moving it.”

“I’m not doing anything I swear!”

“Yeah me neither bro, it’s either you or a ghost.”

“My turn my turn my turn!”

The planchet starts moving quickly and wildly across the board, so fast that the trio can barely keep track of what letters it’s stopping at.

“Okay, I’m already pretty skeptical of any ‘evidence’ you get from a ouija board but I don’t think that even had any words in it.” Todd snarks.

Dirk looks baffled. He’s trying hard to make sense of the message.

“There were probably some spelling mistakes but I definitely saw ‘SMASH’ in there somewhere.”

“I saw a ‘BLAM’ and I think the part at the end was supposed to just be yelling.”

“Yeah, like WAHOO!”

Amanda smiles as she hears the voice affirm her guess.

“Okay, seriously, you’re doing this right?” Todd asks.

Dirk looks offended

“Of course not! I would never fake supernatural evidence! And if I did I’d come up with something better than this!”

“Like, subconsciously then!”

“Todd, please-”

“Guys. Look.”Amanda cuts the argument off. “Are you seeing this?”

“Holy fuck!”

By this point they had all taken their hands off the planchet. It has started moving on it’s own. Amanda is starting to look a little freaked out. Dirk looks awestruck. Todd looks awestruck and horrified. The planchet spells out ‘I M S I C K O F T H E G A M E S L E T S H A V E S O M E R E A L F U N’

Dirk recovers enough to speak.

“S-Spirits, we would just like to communicate with you, we just ask you to give us definitive proof of who you are and that you are here.”

The planchet begins moving again, ‘B O N Z O B A D I D E A L E T S G O B O Y S’

Suddenly Dirk and Todd become aware of a noise.

“Oh god what is that?!”

“Amanda...I think Todd and I can hear the laughing too now.”

In one swift motion the planchet zooms across ‘GOODBYE’ and out the nearest window. It breaks some glass on its way out. Suddenly debris starts flying and yelling, howling, and half-nonsense cheers and threats can be heard. The board is thrown across the room, the couch is picked up and dropped. The front door opens and slams shut over and over. Everyone’s flashlights start to flicker on and off wildly, the screen of Ken’s laptop and a couple camera lenses break. Everyone scatters.

Ken bolts down the basement stairs. Amanda runs for the bathroom. Dirk and Todd scramble frantically in the opposite direction towards the bedroom. They see bits of furniture flying in there too and double back. They have to yell to be heard over the racket.

“Come on! Up the stairs!”

“But Todd! You said it was unsafe!”

“It’s more safe than staying down here, come on!”

Todd drags Dirk up the staircase, they break several steps on their way up and have to keep each other from falling a few times. They make it into one of the upstairs bedrooms.

……

Amanda is in the bathroom, trying to shut herself off from the noise and chaos but it’s too much. It’s all too much and she tries to calm down, gripping the sink and staring into the cracked mirror above it, but it’s too late and she feels freezing pain like frostbite crawling up her hands. She sinks down to the floor and screams and screams and then—

Then she is somewhere else. Another place and another time. She sees a van full of runaways. A family full of people who were alone before they found each other. She knows that they weren’t running from anyone or running to anywhere, they just didn’t see the point in standing still. She sees them as they pulled off the icy road and started exploring their surroundings. She sees the house, sees how they broke the furniture, sprayed red words across the walls, revelled in the joy of feeling free and alive. She sees when they started to get cold. So cold. They dragged every pillow and blanket in the house down to a corner of the downstairs bedroom. They huddled together against the freeze. It wasn’t enough.

Amanda is back on the bathroom floor. She realizes there are tears streaming down her face. She realizes there are are hands wrapped around hers. She looks up into a now familiar face that looks as surprised as she is and hears a now familiar voice ask,

“Are you okay?”

 

She’s not sure if she knows the answer.

……

Ken is in the basement, back pressed up against a wall, breathing heavily, and talking to himself.

“Oh god. Oh god I’m gonna die here. I thought this was gonna be a safe job. Something stable and legal and safe, for once. A chance to get out of dodge and do something normal. I never even considered whether or not I believed in all this stuff, I was just the camera guy. This was just a show for a youtube channel! Now I’m gonna die in a creepy old house because ghosts are real and they want to kill me!”

“Wow, you talk a lot.”

Ken screams.

………

Todd throws the door to the upstairs bedroom shut after getting himself and Dirk into the room. They take a moment to catch their breath.

“Dirk! Ghosts are real!”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all night! Well, really for the past like two years if you want to get technical.”

Todd is yelling. He’s starting to lose it.

“Oh my god, oh my god you’re right! You’ve been right this entire time and I’ve been wrong! I should’ve believed you! I shouldn’t have dismissed and ignored everything you said!”

Todd’s freakout is allowing Dirk to be somewhat calm out of necessity.

“If we weren’t super in danger right now I’d definitely want to record you saying that.”

Todd’s voice has an almost hysterical edge to it now.

“That’s right! The ghosts said they wanted to hurt us and it’s like a war zone down there! And we broke the stairs on our way up! How do we get out?! How do we get Amanda out?! What do we do?!”

“I don’t know! I didn’t exactly have a plan for this!”

Frustration is starting to edge out the fear in Todd’s voice.

“You’ve been trying to prove that ghosts are real for years and you’ve spent all of tonight specifically trying to prove to me that there are violent, dangerous, ghosts in this house and YOU DIDN’T HAVE A PLAN FOR IF YOU WERE RIGHT?!”

“I don’t really think things through, Todd! If I did I’d be too scared to ever do anything even remotely like this! And besides, it was your ‘quick thinking’ that trapped us up here in...in…”

Dirk looks over to the far wall. There’s a large bloodstain that also takes up part of the floor.

“In the room where someone was murdered by a demon...oh god.”

……

Ken turns on his flashlight and points it in the direction of the voice. He screams again at what he sees.

The figure looks like a woman with wild reddish brown hair. It is wearing a white men’s dress shirt and black slacks, heavily stained with dried blood. The knife it is holding is also covered in blood. This is obviously the demon.

“Oh god oh god please don’t kill me!”

The demon lunges towards him with the knife but stops short and looks confused.

“Huh. I don’t think I’m supposed to kill you now.”

“What?”

“I usually only get woken up when I’m s’posed to kill someone but you’re not as bad as the people I usually gotta kill and also when I tried to stab you just now I got a feeling in my head that said ‘Hey, do not kill this guy.’ But if I’m not supposed to kill you then why am I awake?”

Ken’s voice is quiet and careful. The vocal equivalent of walking on eggshells.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just down here hiding from the ghosts.”

“Oh those guys? Yeah they get pretty loud sometimes.”

The noise of the Rowdy 3’s chaos starts to die down and footsteps and an argument from the second floor become audible.

“Oh. Why didn’t you tell me there was other people in here?”

The demon vanishes and Ken is left alone in the basement.

“What the fuck?!”

……

A blood covered figure holding a knife suddenly appears by the window in the upstairs bedroom. Dirk and Todd stare at it in terror.

“Yo.”

Dirk and Todd scream and run out of the room, and into the second floor’s second bedroom. Todd locks the door and then pushes them into the connected bathroom and locks that door.

“Oh god Todd we’re gonna die! We’re gonna die and get dragged to hell!”

“Calm down! How do we get out of this?!”

“We can’t! We’d have to leave the house and that window is too small to jump out of!”

The supposedly locked bedroom door opens with a soft click, Todd starts frantically looking around the bathroom. He sees a patch of rotten, water-damaged floorboards. He thinks about the layout of the house and chooses a spot.

“Dirk! Get over here, I have an idea!”

“What?!”

“No time to explain, just trust me!”

Dirk looks nervous but he goes over to where Todd is standing. Todd grabs Dirk’s arms.

“Okay, on the count of three we jump. One.”

“What?!”

“Just do it! Two.”

The doorknob to the bathroom turns.

“Three!”

……

Amanda has moved to the downstairs bedroom. She lets her fingers trail against the walls, feeling their history. There was the warmth of home then cut with a sharp knife of fear and now empty.

“It’s the paths of energy.” One of the ghosts, Martin, explains. She can see all of them now but only Cross was manifesting strongly enough to have a definite, solid, shape that could be seen and heard by others. No one told her this, she just knew. The ghosts had told her their names themselves though. “The past marks up people and places and things. Carves the energy around them into certain shapes.”

“Can you see it? Feel it?”

“Yeah. But not like you can.”

She looks in the debris until she finds what she hadn’t realized she was looking for. Precious things tucked away for safekeeping. She picks up the baseball bat first. It feels like control, like freedom, like howling at the moon. She sees a smirk from Martin. She lifts it over her head and smashes it down into the broken furniture. They all cheer. She leans it against her shoulder as she continues looking.

She sees the crowbar next. Its energy is mischievous and warm like cinnamon. She tosses it at Cross who looks extremely pleased when he catches it.

Next is something small. One of those tiny bats you can buy for kids at baseball games. It’s wild, stillness is an anathema to it, it’s quick enough to deliver a thousand little strikes that together could topple any obstacle. She sees an echo of the youngest of the ghosts using it to smash windows. She smiles fondly and puts it in her pocket.

The sledgehammer is heavy, she drags it out into the open more than she lifts it. It’s a comfortable weight, dependable, steady, sturdy. It is also a powerful weight though. A single blow could do massive damage and it doesn’t have to be a precise hit, just an angry one. She looks over at one of the other ghosts, Gripps, and smiles.

“Nice.”

He smiles back, feeling proud.

Then Amanda sees the leather jacket. It’s what all of the weapons were resting on. She picks it up and shakes off the dust. The back is bedazzled. It says ‘Tequila’.

“Keep it.” Gripps says.

Cross nods in agreement.

“Yeah, it was an extra.”

“We don’t need it anymore anyway!” The youngest one, Vogel, adds.

Amanda puts on the jacket. It’s a bit big but in a comfortable way. It feels right.

It is at this point that they hear the crash. Amanda had been pretty zoned out to everything outside of her immediate surroundings but this is loud enough to bring her back to the big picture and it brings with it a gut feeling of danger.

“Todd!”

The ghosts look at her seriously, there is a gratitude and devotion in that look. There is also a promise. Cross puts the crowbar through his belt loop and holds out his hand.

“Give me the hammer.”

She does. She holds Martin’s baseball bat at the ready as they leave the room.  
...

Todd and Dirk crash down through the floor and land on the couch in the living room. It isn’t a smooth landing but there are no serious injuries.

“Todd! The salt circle!”

Both men frantically scramble into the circle in the center of the room while at the same time being careful not to disturb it. Soon they see the demon appear before them.

“I can wait y’know. I can wait forever and eventually you’ll have to leave the circle to go eat or something or else you’ll die anyway...I don’t think I need to wait though.”

The demon looks at both of them appraisingly. Dirk is shaking from fear. Todd is also afraid but looks ready to fight if he has to.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to kill you guys either. You haven’t really done anything really bad and you,”

The demon points at Todd with the knife.

“You’re just a liar and that’s not so bad that you’s gotta die for it.”

During this speech Ken carefully sneaks past behind the demon and bolts out the front door. The sound of a car driving away is heard seconds later. Todd now looks furious.

“That bastard!”

“Oh, that’s a bit harsh. Honestly it’s probably what either of us would’ve done.”

The demon’s face goes from calculating to puzzled.

“Huh. I think...I think I gotta go. Like leave. I’ve never been s'posed to leave before. Somethin’ weird is going on.”

And then the demon vanishes. Dirk relaxes like a rubber band snapping back after being stretched to its limit.

“Oh my god, that was so scary, I was so sure we were gonna die, do you think it’s really gone?”

“I don’t know, but we are getting out of here as soon as possible.”

“Wait, what about our equipment? What about the evidence?”

“Stay and grab it if you want but I am calling a lyft back to the hotel and I am waiting for it outside.”

Amanda steps out from the hallway where she had been waiting in case violence became necessary. She holds her baseball bat more casually.

“Todd? Dirk?”

“Amanda! Thank god you're okay!” Todd says. “Come on, let’s leave!”

“Wait, slow down. There’s something weird happening-”

“Yeah! This place is for real haunted by actual ghosts! We have to get the fuck out of—Wait, who’s that?”

Cross waves.

“I’m Cross!”

“He’s a ghost.”

By this point Cross has started to look slightly transparent so no one doubts the veracity of this statement. Dirk’s jaw drops. Todd looks like he has trouble processing this.

“...Okay. Listen, everything is insane now and I have to reevaluate my entire worldview but one thing I do know is that this place is dangerous and we have to leave right now.”

“Todd, wait!”

“No, I have to get you somewhere safe!”

Amanda suddenly looks confused and worried.

“Todd. Why do you feel guilty?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not guilty, I’m scared because we’re in a deadly ghost house!”

“No. I can see it now. It’s under the surface like an underground river but it’s always there. Todd, I heard the demon say you were a liar, why?”

Todd decides not to even try to process this.

“We can talk about this later, come on.”

He grabs her wrist. It’s like an electric shock goes through him. Amanda is staring at him with blank white eyes and he can feel them staring through him. Through his past. Her face looks like she’s just been hit hard in the chest then slowly her expression shifts to anger.  
He knows she knows before she says it. The ends of her hair start to lift slightly away from her. Her voice sounds almost like it has an echo.

“You lied to me.”

“Amanda please, I’m so sorry.”

“YOU LIED TO ME!”

A shockwave knocks him back and down to the floor. Amanda steps towards him. An aura of bright blue light is starting to become visible around her.

“YOU LIED TO EVERYONE AND NOW I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE!”

“I’m still me, I’m still your brother! Just let me explain!”

Amanda screams. And as the noise of her scream fills the room the aura of light rushes outwards and the entire house shakes. She stops screaming and takes a deep breath. She looks normal again. She looks down at Todd.

“I never want to see you again.”

She turns and starts walking towards the back of the house.

“Bye, Dirk. Good luck, and I’m sorry you have such a shitty assistant.”

Dirk’s face is still stuck in an expression of pure shock but he now has his phone out and has been filming all of this. Amanda climbs out of a busted out window in the back of the house.

“Come on boys.”

Cross growls a bit at Todd before following. The ghosts Dirk and Todd can’t see also leave. Suddenly Dirk and Todd are just sitting in an old, empty, busted up house in the middle of the night. The change in the vibe the house gives off is palpable. Todd gets to his feet and Dirk walk over to him.

“So...Do you want to talk about what all of that was-”

“No. Not tonight. Nothing else gets to happen tonight except going back to the hotel and going to sleep.”

“Okay, yes, good plan. I’m going to go collect all of the equipment, see if there’s anything left that’s not broken. You go call a lyft like you said.”

Todd sighs.

“I’ll help you with the cameras and stuff just don’t try to talk about anything. I can’t deal with anything you’re gonna say right now.”

“Excellent!”

Todd sighs again.

……

Ken is driving away from the house as fast as he can, as he turns onto a larger street he slows down and starts to calm down.

“I did it. I made it. I made it out.”

“Hey.”

Ken screams and crashes the car into a ditch. He passes out.

When he wakes up the sun is just starting to rise. He starts trying to take stock of the situation.

“Hi.”

Ken screams again. Seated beside him is the demon, still covered in blood, still carrying a knife. Ken is in hysterics.

“Oh god oh god please don’t kill me please I don’t want to die!”

The demon sounds annoyed.

“I already said I’m not gonna kill you. I’m not supposed to. And I don’t think I can? There’s like, something in my head telling me I can’t.”

“Then why are you here?!”

“I was supposed to follow you. I don’t know why, up until now I was always supposed to stay in the house but then you left and I was s’posed to follow you.”

Ken looks past his limit.

“Why is this happening to me?”

Suddenly the sound of a motorcycle interrupts the conversation. The road has been deserted so far but now someone is driving up to the car. The motorcyclist stops and walks over, he taps on the glass of the passenger side window which Ken then rolls down.

“You two okay in there?”

“Listen man, you gotta help me!”

The demon buries the knife in the man’s skull. He falls over dead. Ken screams.

“Why did you do that?!”

“He was bad.”

The demon opens the passenger side door and Ken sees that the man was holding a gun.

“Plus, he was gonna kill you. I don’t know why but I had to kill him because of that too.”

The demon gets out of the car and takes off the dead biker’s jacket and red bandana.

“Hey do you want these boots?—Whoa, what happened to your hands?”

Ken had put his hands up in a half placating half defensive manner when the demon turned back towards him.

“I...I scraped them up when I fell down in the basement...In the basement with all the occult symbols on the floor. Hold on, you said before you were bound to the house? Like, stuck there?”

“I was supposed to stay there yeah.”

“And now, you’re supposed to follow me? And protect me?”

“Yeah I think so.”

“Maybe when my blood got on the sigils it made it so you were bound to me instead of the house. Is that possible?”

The demon shrugged. It was now wearing the biker’s jacket and boots and had his red bandana tied around its neck. Like the demon’s original outfit the clothes fit, but not perfectly, and they didn’t quite cover up the bloodstains on the white dress shirt. Ken was surprised to realize that he found the mismatched look kind of endearing.

“Hey, do you have a name?”

“Barberithamuz Marzanna.”

“...Can I call you Bart?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s easier to say than Barberithamuz Marzanna.”

“Okay.”

“So, listen, Bart, if I’ve got this right you’ll kill anyone around me who’s bad or who tries to hurt me.”

“Yeah.”

“What makes someone ‘bad’?”

Bart gets back in the passenger seat.

“If they kill people or are gonna kill people or hurt people bad enough. It’s hard to explain with words but I just get a feeling if someone’s bad.”

“I think I know some bad guys. Some guys I used to work for. I got out a while ago but as far as I know they’re still doing the same things they were when I was with them.” Ken sounds angry and a bit regretful.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I think we should pay them a visit.”

“So I can kill them?”

“Yeah Bart, so you can kill them.” He says determinedly.

Ken starts the car and manages to get it back onto the road.

“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?”

“What’s a radio?”

……

Farah is staring at Dirk and Todd. They have just shown her the footage from the haunted house after Todd refused to let Dirk try to explain without first presenting the evidence. They are in Farah’s apartment, it’s been a few days since they visited the house.

“And this is...real?”

“Yes.”

Farah looks at Todd.

“I saw all of it, I swear. I know it seems insane but this is what happened. Ghosts are real.”

“And demons.” Dirk adds.

“And demons.”

Farah stands up from where they’re all sitting at her dining table and starts pacing.

“So Ken and Amanda are just...gone.”

“And the rental car. We have no idea where either of them went. And Ken left his phone and laptop in the house.” Dirk says.

Todd looks devastated.

“I tried calling Amanda but she won’t pick up.”

Dirk looks over at him sympathetically and puts a hand on his shoulder. In the last few days Todd has filled him in on what Amanda had been referring to during their confrontation.

Farah continues pacing and processes quickly. “Okay. Okay. Well, no one official is going to believe this footage. We won’t be able to present this to the world as verified proof.”

“What?!” Todd yells.

“Hey, calm down. I believe you but there’s no way to prove this wasn’t all staged or faked somehow. Especially since so much of the equipment was damaged and apparently all of the ghosts and the demon in the house left.”

Dirk looks over at Todd.

“That is a good point.”

“Why aren’t you more upset about this? Hasn’t it been your dream to prove to the world that ghosts are real?”

“Well, now I know that getting proof is possible! And now I’ve got you on my side and...well if I can convince you that ghosts are real then I can convince anyone, right?”

Todd looks at Dirk and sees the earnest hope in his face. Todd has been doing a lot of thinking over the past few days. He thought about what he believed, or rather what he didn’t, and why he didn’t. He thought about how Dirk believes in things with his whole self and is willing throw himself into danger to prove what he believes even though he’s always so scared. He thought about what that used to make him think about Dirk. He thought about what it makes him think about Dirk now.

“We can convince anyone.”

Dirk beams like the sun. He turns back to Farah.

“We can still put the video up on youtube right? Our viewers will believe us!”

Farah thinks for a moment.

“Some of them probably will, but the majority is going to assume it’s a hoax and feel betrayed. We’ll lose a high percentage of our audience and then we probably won’t be able to make any money off of our videos anymore. There are options. We could put up everything up until 3:00am and claim that all footage after that was unsalvageable. We could even put up the other footage next Halloween or April Fools’ Day when everyone would assume it’s a joke even if we maintain that it’s real. But then we would still need an explanation as to why Todd suddenly believes in ghosts.”

“Yeah, people will wonder why you’ve abandoned the Brotzmaniacs and come over to the side of the Dirktectives.”

“Let’s not be hasty.” Todd replies. “I know ghosts are real now, and I’m trying to be more open-minded, but I still think you’re a bit too quick to see evidence where there is none, I mean you were right this one time but that doesn’t mean everywhere else we’ve been or will go to is haunted too. Don’t expect me to suddenly start agreeing with you about everything in future episodes. If there are future episodes.”

Everyone thinks for a minute. Todd sighs.

“Farah, you’re the one paying for all of this, what do you want us to do?”

“Honestly? I’m leaving this up to you guys. This is your show, your dream, and I’m not going to tell you what to do with it.”

“God, I just don’t know. It feels like whatever we do we’re gonna have to end the show.” Todd sounds defeated.

“I feel that way too. I mean if we continue are we going to run into this problem every time we find proof?” Dirk replies.

“What makes you think we’ll see something this big again? We’ve been doing this for two years and this is the first and only time we’ve found proof.”

“Well now that we have seen something this big we have a vibe that paranormal creatures can pick up on. They’ll be drawn to us and we’ll be drawn to them. We’ll find more proof even if we don’t look for it.”

“Great. That’s just...great.” Todd replies. “Even ignoring that, I don’t think we can keep making Unsolved videos about ghosts and demons and just pretend like we didn’t find anything here. If only because the ghost question isn’t actually unsolved anymore. I mean, we solved it. If we pretend we didn’t it’d be lying to our fans. I...I don’t want to lie to people anymore. ”

“Todd! Oh my god that gives me an idea! It’s a little but crazy but I do think it’s our only way to save the show.”

Farah sits back down.

“Well, let’s hear it.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it won’t be the craziest thing I’ve heard all week.”

Dirk tells them his plan.

“I was wrong. This is the craziest thing I’ve heard all week. And three days ago my sister joined a gang made up entirely of ghosts.”

“Is that a ‘no’?”

“I don’t know. I might have to quit my day job.”

“What are your chances of keeping it anyway after missing days of work without notice for inexplicable reasons and telling the internet that you believe in ghosts?”

“Fair point. Farah, are you willing to pay for this?”

“I mean, it shouldn’t end costing me that much more than the show as it is now does. Besides...I don’t want to sound like Dirk but I have a weird feeling that you guys are supposed to be doing this. That if this stuff is real, which it apparently is and I’m honestly still processing that, it’s important that you two are out there looking into it. And I want to help however I can.”

Dirk gets up and puts his hand on Farah’s shoulder.

“Good. Because we’re going to need a new cameraperson…If Todd says yes, of course.”

They look at Todd. Todd looks at them.

“Yeah, alright.”

“Excellent! Let’s get started!”

……

Amanda walks until she finds the right road. Then she traces it back to the right spot and walks off into the woods just a bit, just far enough that no one can see it from the road. By this point Cross has gone fully incorporeal again and Amanda is getting tired of carrying the heavy sledgehammer. She finds what she’s looking for quickly enough though and triumphantly pulls off the tarp.

She stares at the van. It’s old and dirty and held together with duct tape and it’s beautiful. It already feels like home. Amanda wonders if it still runs or if she’s going to have to have a weird and awkward encounter with a mechanic. She finds a key in the pocket of her new jacket and opens the door. She tosses the four weapons into the back where a miscellaneous jumble of other items and articles of clothing resides. She sticks the key into the ignition and turns it. The engine growls. Amanda cheers, and four more voices only she can hear echo her. She pulls onto the road and drives off.

The next couple weeks are spent wandering and enjoying being on the move and being free. When Amanda’s attacks have enough energy in them to make all four of the ghosts fully corporeal they celebrate, drinking beer and dancing and smashing everything in sight. And in between driving and partying Amanda finds other things to trace the pasts of. Running her fingers over walls and car doors and lost things, trying to hone her skill but not really having any idea how.

Now Amanda is sitting in the driver’s seat of the van, staring at the road ahead, lost in thought.

“What’s on your mind, Boss?” Martin asks.

“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“Nope. Sorry, you’re in charge.”

“It’s just…This is all really weird, this thing that I can do. And I have no idea how to explain it or learn how to fully control it or figure out exactly what it is but…”

“But?”

“I have this weird hunch that I know where to go to find someone who can teach me. And if you want to go somewhere else or just keep going nowhere that’s fine but...if it’s okay I want to start driving in the direction my gut is telling me is right.”

“Whatever you wanna do, wherever you wanna go, we’ll follow you anywhere. Not like we got any place else to be, definitely not any place better than here with you. Wherever ‘here’ ends up being.”

“I really wish I could hug you right now, Martin.”

“You’ll just have to remember to later.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

And Amanda drives off into the horizon. Not knowing exactly where she’s going, but knowing that she’s not going alone.

……

The scene shows the moments just before 3:00am on the night spent in the haunted house. Suddenly it freezes and switches to Dirk and Todd back in the office from the start. Dirk addresses the camera.

“Hello fans! I bet you’re wondering why you’re seeing us now and not seeing what happened next. Well, it’s because what you’re going to see next is going to look like a hoax. And for several reasons that will soon become apparent we can’t prove to you that it isn’t. But we’re asking you to take a leap of faith and believe us.”

“The Brotzmaniacs out there are going to have an especially hard time believing this but look, I, a rational and skeptical person-”

“Probably the most skeptical person, so skeptical that you don’t really even count as rational anymore.”

“Shut up. I’m telling you that this is real. I saw it and heard it myself. And if you, understandably, can’t trust him on this then trust me.”

“Unfortunately, due to the fact that we didn’t have any equipment upstairs and the a lot of the equipment we did have set up downstairs was broken in the...um...thing, we don’t have footage of everything that happened in the house that night. But we’ve managed to put together enough to get across the gist of it.”

“And we will be back after the end of it with some more things to say about what you’re about to see.”

“So, without further ado, the definitely real and not a hoax events of our night in the haunted house.”

“Okay, saying it like that kind of makes it sound like it is a hoax. Which it isn’t.”

“Just show the stuff.” Dirk urges.

What follows is the footage of the ouija board conversation followed by clips of the rest of the night’s events. Some of this footage has no audio, some of it is only audio, some of it is filmed through a camera with a cracked lens. All footage from the end of the night has been strategically edited so that it doesn’t show Amanda using her psychic powers. Most of her confrontation with Todd is also intentionally left inaudible.

The scene changes back to Dirk and Todd in the office. Todd addresses the camera.

“So that’s what actually truthfully happened in the house that night. Ghosts and demons are real. I know most of you aren’t going to believe us but we swear we’re not lying to you.”

“We haven’t heard from Ken, our cameraman, since that night. He left his phone and laptop when he ran away in our rental car so we haven’t been able to contact him. We don’t know enough about his personal life to know if he went home or not but we assume that if the demon killed him then we probably would have heard about his death on the news. Still, if any of you know Ken Adams you might want to check in on him.”

“My sister did take her phone but she, um, understandably isn’t answering my calls. She did change her voicemail message to ‘Stop calling me, asshole.’ so I know she’s still alive out there. Amanda, if you’re watching this then please just try to stay safe, wherever you are. I love you.”

“And Ken, if you’re watching this, please return the rental car for us. Now obviously what happened is going to have significant ramifications for the future of the show, but don’t worry, we’re not cancelling. But if you don't believe us about this not being a hoax then don’t worry, you won’t have to hear us talk about ghosts and demons very much from now on.”

“We might still do episodes about some supposedly haunted locations on special occasions, but since the question of ghosts and demons being real isn’t technically unsolved anymore it won’t be the focus of the show anymore. Instead, we’re gonna mainly look into non-ghost related paranormal mysteries like we have in the past. And don’t worry, we are going to make those episodes more interesting with more on-location work and actual investigating instead of you just having to watch us two assholes sitting at a desk all season. And future seasons of Conspiracy Theories will continue mostly unchanged.”

“But, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop investigating ghostly activity altogether, we just won’t be doing episodes about it. Instead, we’ll be doing something else.”

Dirk leans forwards and starts sounding more serious.

“Look. If you’re watching this and you believe us, first of all thank you, and secondly it might be because you yourself have witnessed something supernatural. If you or someone you know is experiencing paranormal activity and you’re scared or confused then please, let us try to help you. Even if you don’t think the source of the supernatural activity is a ghost, we’ll still look into it. The purpose of this isn’t to start another show, anything we film during these investigations is solely so we can look back at it later, we’re just here to help. So, if you need help dealing with problems you can’t explain and feel like you have no one else to turn to, please use the information on this website that we’re putting up a link to on the screen right now to contact Dirk Gently’s Supernatural Investigations Agency, and we’ll do the best we can to solve your case.”

“That’s right, we’re the ghostbusters now!”

“Just to clarify, we don’t actually claim to know how to effectively get rid of any ghosts in your residence, but if you ask us to we’ll certainly try.”

“As always, thank you for watching.” Todd says.

“Normally we would end this by saying the mystery remains unsolved but since we solved it I don’t know what to say now.” Dirk muses.

“How about: For the first time in our show’s history, this mystery is no longer...unsolved.”

“Ooh that’s good, and then we’ll put a big ‘SOLVED’ stamp up on the screen instead if the ‘UNSOLVED’ one.”

“Yeah, that’ll look cool.” Todd agrees.

The credits roll.


End file.
